Newcomer Needs – Reaching our ELL students

Judy Edwards and Cheryl Jolley presented a series of workshops on ELL Newcomers with Information and Strategies. Part of the S.D.A.I.E. summer workshops held at Trevecca Nazarene University, these workshops were intended to help a broader range of educators work with immigrants who have been in the U.S. less than one year.

S.D.A.I.E. stands for Specifically Designed Academic Instruction in English. The Office of English Language Learners in MNPS offers several 3,5, and 6 day courses for educators. Mr. Littlefield’s page offers an explanation of some of what is covered in these workshops.

Judy and Cheryl teach at the International Newcomer Academy in Nashville, Tennessee. They have trained my faculty in Thinking Maps and train others in A Path to Proficiency for English Language Learners, KAGAN Cooperative Learning, and Balanced Literacy.

One aspect of their workshop that I appreciated was their specifying which teaching techniques were used throughout the day including:

Circle Maps

Multi-Flow Maps

Stand-Up, Hand-up, Pair-Up

Create/Assess Prior Knowledge

Show Me with Yes/No cards

Shared Reading

Energizers with Magic

Sort

Line Up

Energizers with Signatures

Mix-N-Match

Color Coding

Double Bubble Maps

Visuals

Auditory Cues

Stephen Krashen’s Stages of Second Language Acquisition (Krashen & Terrell, 1983) were shared with an explanation of Terrell’s Taxonomy. This helped us understand which Higher Order Thinking Skills could be used at each stage of acquisition:

Pre-Production (Silent period)

Beginner (Early Production)

Intermediate (Speech Emergence)

Early Advanced (Intermediate Fluency)

Advanced Transitioning (Advanced Fluency)

This simple chart helped me visually understand why some of the activities I have attempted in the past were so difficult with newcomer students. My students aren’t ready to justifyl, complete, defend, debate, analyze, evaluate, and describe in detail until they read the Early Advanced and Advanced Transitioning stages – usually 5-7 years down the road.

The handout of “Questioning Techniques for English Language Learners” enabled me to better understand how to involve my Newcomer students. I will assume that Judy Edwards and Cheryl Jolley created this list since there is no citation on the handout. They did encourage me to share it with my faculty.